Sweden.—That the coldest and most savage country of Europe should be rich in anything except men and women is strange. And is it? According to the standards of England or America, we may say, No. And yet travelers tell us that in the towns and on the country estates are houses rich with works of art, and filled with books. So far as these go they indicate wealth and leisure. But the best sign of a prosperous people is not pictures; neither is it books. Is it not that more than one-half her people own their lands and raise the food they eat? Is it not that the greedy cormorant called “Trade” has not shut up most of her people in those Bastiles called factories, and thus degraded body and soul to the verge of, if not into, the gulf of pauperism and vice?
This helps to explain the general well-being which is still to be found in those northern countries of Sweden, Norway, and Denmark; but it does not fully explain whence came the first flow of wealth and the first gatherings of art into Sweden. I believe they came from the great and successful wars of Gustavus Adolphus and Charles XII.
By no possibility can war be careful of the rights of man. War is intended to hurt, to exhaust, to consume other nations. War not only takes food and munitions in the conquered country; it takes whatever it wants and can take, whether of necessaries, luxuries, gold, or art. War, we know, enabled the first and great Napoleon to enrich his palaces and the museums of Paris with the finest works of art found in the countries he overran. War, I do not doubt, brought into Sweden the beginnings of those collections which now count many of the fine pictures of Guido and Raphael, of Teniers and Douw. Frugality and general well-doing have done the rest; so that all through the south of Sweden, and less in Norway, are to be found delightful houses and cultivated people. But neither Sweden nor Norway has made Art the first business or first glory of life; and well for her that they have not. This is the ornament and finish of the structure, not its body or soul.
We do not look, therefore, to find here any such institutions as those of Meissen or Sèvres.